Name my Movie!

Ok dear readers... time to get to work.

I've completed principal photography on my horror short movie that up to this point I've been calling Spook Hunt.
After finishing the first rough cut, it has become obvious that the title is not doing the movie justice.

I need another title.

Here is where you come in.

First, read the following synopsis of the movie, watch the new opening scene, and then look over the list of possible names.
Let me know what best matches the feel of the movie and also grabs your attention.

Spook Hunt is a short film that takes you into the dark recesses of a haunted house and the even darker fathoms of the human soul.

Charles has a problem.  There's something in his house scaring his family and it just won't leave them alone.  They've all heard voices, seen dark shapes moving in the shadows, felt that uneasy sensation of being watched.  Finally Charles captures something on his audio recorder that proves they're not all going crazy.  He decides to make a stand, enlisting the help of his long-time buddy, Rob Tupper, to delve into the mystery of his unwanted guest and hopefully send it on its way.  If they can somehow figure out what the entity is and what it wants, maybe they can all finally have some peace.

Rob's worried about his buddy.  He's been acting really strange lately ... well, even stranger than usual.  Rob knows that things have been rough for Charles - struggling to make ends meet in a down economy, dealing with the unexplained disappearance of his brother-in-law, Marcus, and now these claims of some ghost harassing his family.  Rob is skeptical that there's anything paranormal going on, but he agrees to help his friend out if only to find out the real nature of the problem.

With the lights out, they are led on an adventure of paranormal encounters: cold spots, an eerie talking children's book, unexplained apparitions and a final mystery that leads to an unforgettably disturbing ending.

Ok, now to the possible titles:

Elemental Fear
Primal Darkness
Up From the Dark
From the Darkness
Enter the Dark

Turn Out the Lights
Out Go the Lights
The Disembodied
 
Deliver
Deliver the Darkness
Among the Darkness

Among the Shadows

Alone in the Darkness
Don’t Fear the Darkness
Don’t Dread the Night

Dread the Night
Dread of Night
Into the Dead of Night
Into the Dark of Night
Whispers of Dread

Night of the Abyss
Abyss of Night
Into The Abyss
Repossessed
The Inhabitant

Alright, now get to work and VOTE!

Check Out the Updated Spook Hunt Website

We're in the homestretch of shooting Enter The Dark and it was time to give the website an update in preparation for the movie's premiere (hopefully at this year's Screamfest).

There will be more to come as I edit and post the trailer and add some more content throughout.

Spook Hunt Scene 5 Notes - an unwelcome late night visitor

We recently shot scene 5 from my indie short movie, Spook Hunt.  The usual suspects were there to make the evening happen - actors Rob Sandusky & Charles Yoakum, Director of Photography Rob Weiner (with his Canon 7D) and Ben Weiner recording audio.  Oh yeah, and me running around like a goofball trying to do too much as usual.

(Charles pleads his case)

We only had a couple of hours to shoot so I had picked a fairly easy section of scene 5 to cover.  Charles discovers another piece of ghostly "evidence" and tries to convince Rob of it's validity.  Rob is not only not convinced, he's now convinced that Charles is just messing with him, gets pissed off and storms out of the room.  Pretty simple. The boys did a great job of building up the scene and hitting their emotional marks.

(Rob is not impressed)

After the shoot wrapped, I spent the usual hour or so transferring and checking the video and audio files.  Of course, when I finally tried to go to sleep, my head was still swimming with ideas and questions and recapping the evening.  I started thinking about upcoming scenes that we need to shoot and ways to make them better.  Can I make this part scarier, can I build more tension, a better payoff - what if this happened... or they saw this... or heard this...??  So I'm laying in bed at around 1:30 am, filling my head with the scariest shit I can think of to see if it will work in my movie.  I am now in that weird half-sleep state where part of my consciousness has drifted off, while the other part keeps chugging along working on the movie, like a computer that won't shut down.

I change positions in bed so I'm now facing the side of the bed closest to me and I see this staring at me:

 (please leave me alone and kindly visit my neighbors, m'kay)

Well, actually it wasn't exactly that (that is the demon from the Exorcist), it was actually a lot scarier than that and I could hop over to Photoshop and render a more accurate version for you but I really have no desire to force myself to remember that image with any level of detail.

As soon as I see this demon I literally levitate off the bed and propel myself to the opposite side of the bed whereupon I crash into my wife while uttering a totally pathetic shriek.  She is not too happy with me.  I dare not tell her what I've just seen.

I look back to the side of the bed and of course it is no longer there.  I try to convince myself that it was just a trick of my mind.  A left-over spectre from my strange sleep-state.  You think about ghosts, demons and scary shit for long enough and of course your dreams will be filled with them.

This is not the first time my dreams have been plagued by haunted images.  The thing about making horror movies is that they live in your head for years at a time.  You are constantly thinking about the most violent, horrific and terrifying things.  When Lis and I were putting finishing touches on The Commune, I had some horribly messed-up dreams.  Now as I'm trying to wrap up Spook Hunt, I am getting visited again.

However, the thing about this last vision was - it really wasn't a dream.  I did not dream I woke up, rolled over and saw a demon staring at me.  I actually did wake up, roll over and see a demon staring at me.  Now obviously, in my ghostly-obsessed state, my tortured mind must have simply conjured a demonic image where there were only abstract patterns of light and shadow.

Right?

That's what I continue to tell myself every night as I try to doze off to sleep - always keeping one eye on the watch for my unwanted late night visitor.


(... by the way next time, remind me to make a comedy - or at least not shoot a horror film in MY FREAKING HOUSE!!)

Spook Hunt: On Writing

It was 1:57 am.  I had already gotten up once out of bed and dragged my ass in front of my computer, I really didn't want to have to do it again. My brain however didn't care. It kept swirling with ideas, dialogue and shot setups.

Go to sleep please, I told it.

Nope.

I knew it was a losing battle.  The more I tried to shut my brain down, the more ideas kept popping up, and when a good idea floated across, part of my brain kept flashing so I would remember that idea by morning.

Eventually I gave up, plopped in front of the computer and begin writing - or should I say, not so much writing, as brain-dumping all these ideas into Microsoft Word.  You see, I don't really write while I'm at the keyboard, I just self dictate ideas, sentences and dialogue that I've already worked over in my mind time and time again.

My best times for "writing" are either right when I'm drifting off to sleep, or when I'm in the shower. Something about when there's no other distractions allows these thoughts that have been percolating in the dark recesses of my mind to finally float to the surface.  Then it's a mad dash to record them before they sink back down into forgotten darkness. I've written many a blog post with nothing but a towel wrapped around myself - desperately trying to jot the ideas down before the images fade away from memory.

Why I can't write like a normal person (you know, sit in front of the computer, work through an idea and start typing) I really don't know, but this is what I'm stuck with.

So, a number of weeks ago I realized that I would have to re-write (and re-shoot and re-edit) the first two scenes of my movie, Spook Hunt.  It's not that they were horrible, they just were just a little flat. And they were almost 4 minutes long - a sure death sentence for a short film that needs to be 15 minutes or less.

These were two perfectly good scenes where my two characters discuss what's going on and set up what will happen - you know, the dreaded exposition scenes.  I tried to dress them up as much as I could, but I knew it was a losing battle.  After shooting and editing the first two scenes of my movie, I knew they would have to go.  I still didn't know how to fix them however.

Fortunately a good friend gave me great notes that hit it on the head why the scenes weren't working.  One of his criticisms was that the dialogue was too "on the nose", a very typical problem for neophyte screenwriters.

The premise is very simple:  Charles has been hearing and seeing weird things in his house and his wife has freaked out and wants to sell the house - not a good idea in this economy.  He has brought his buddy Rob over to help him investigate and hopefully rid himself of his ghostly problem.  Now obviously there is more going on in the movie (especially the end), but this is how it starts, so I just needed a way to get into the film and set it up.

I had the two guys sitting around talking about the weird sound Charles had captured; when the sound had been recorded, what it could mean, how the sound had effected his family, while they looked at and listened to the sound.  Pretty one-dimensional.  Then I had the two of them discussing the gear they were going to use (a camera, flashlight and digital recorder)  and why it was important to use that gear, and how capturing something on that gear would help solve Charles' problem, all while they got the gear together.  Again, one-dimensional.

Yeah, I added some other stuff to each scene, but it was just window dressing.  The problem is people, especially guys, just do not talk like that. They usually have cross-purposes and talk over each other and change the subject and evade and eventually get back to the subject at hand.  That push and pull is what helps make a scene dynamic.

There was no real conflict or tension in either scene.  Charles is kinda freaked out and desperate, while Rob is concerned -  doesn't make for great drama.

Finally, it came to me that I should just combine the two scenes.  Have Rob listening to the weird sound while Charles is getting gear together. Except Rob isn't really listening to the sound - he's half paying attention to it while texting on the phone and trying to get Charles to go get a drink with his buddies.  Ah, that's better, a little dynamism and tension.  It doesn't take much to bring a scene alive.  Now there is a natural arc to the scene where Rob starts out as skeptical and non-committed but then eventually agrees to help his buddy out.  But of course, to keep some tension going through the next couple of scenes, I added one caveat:  Rob gives him just two hours - then he's dragging his ass out to get some drinks.

The other issue was I just had too many pieces of information crammed into these first two scenes, so my movie was top-heavy.  It was like, 4 minutes of setup and information and plot points and then whammo - 10 minutes of non-stop ghostly action culminating in a wild climax.  So, it was just a matter of paring down those plot points to the essentials in the beginning, eliminating some altogether, and then sprinkling the rest throughout the following ghost-hunting scenes so that I could build a more natural rhythm of tension and release.

This of course meant that I would have to work on not only the first two scenes of my script, but many of the later ones as well, all while I had already shot half of the movie already. 

Now you can understand why my head was swimming with ideas at 1:57 in the morning...

Spook Hunt Scene 4 Preview

Here's a scene 4 sneak peek preview (you'll just have to wait until the whole movie is finished to see the entire scene!)

Keep in mind that the audio has not been mixed yet and some shots are still kinda dark as there has been no color grading yet.

Best to watch at night with the lights out!


Spook Hunt Scene 4 Preview from Todd Miro on Vimeo.

Spook Hunt Scene 4 notes - the perils of microbudget filmmaking

It was 1:30 am Saturday morning.  We had just finished almost five hours of shooting.  Everyone else had gone home and I was transferring and backing up all the media to hard drives.  I pulled up a couple shots to see how they looked and my heart sank to the pit of my stomach.  There was practically nothing there - no usable image at all.  There just was not enough light.

 (Yep - that's my master shot - enough to make a grown man cry)

 (...and there's Charles' close-up Charles?  Charles? anybody there?)

Writer/Director Todd Miro was really pissed off that Producer/Prop Master Todd Miro had slacked on his duties.

This last shoot for Spook Hunt really hammered home to me how much I've been juggling on this project.  I've been wearing the multiple hats of:

Writer
Producer
Director
Post Production Coordinator
Editor
Digital Media Wrangler
Sound Recordist
Production Manager
Craft Services
Set Design
Location Manager
Script Supervisor
Prop Master
Stunt Coordinator

Not to mention, running and maintaining my post-production business, Miro Digital Arts (finishing editing and sound mixing for the latest Goldman Prize videos), and oh yeah, being a father and husband too.

Something had to give - and it finally did Friday night.

Spook Hunt Scenes 2 and 3

Here's a rough cut of scenes 2 and 3 with a first pass of color-grading.  At the end of Scene 3, we really start to get into the meat of the film!


Spook Hunt Scenes 2 and 3 from Todd Miro on Vimeo.

Spook Hunt - Scene 3 notes

Now this was a fun shoot - the first time we got to sneak around in the dark and really get into some of the core elements of the movie.

On the set were the usual suspects: myself; Charles Yoakum and Rob Sandusky as, well... Charles and Rob; Director of Photography Rob Weiner,  and his son Ben to help out; also with us was Eduardo Silva, a great cameraman himself and jack of all trades who recently finished shooting a fantastic looking indie comedy, Not Quite College.

As always, our main camera was the Canon 7D, this time with a zoom lens to facilitate quick setups.  We used a Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 which we rented from BorrowLenses.com - a great resource that fedexed the lens right to my doorstep!  We were wide open on the lens the whole time, at ISO 800.

Our lighting rig consisted of the following:

1 flashlight.

Yup, that's it.  I really wanted the look of a pitch black house with just one light source constantly creating new looks - sometimes silhouettes, sometimes bounced light of the walls or ceilings, sometimes pitch black.

 

 

I wanted to blacks to go absolute black because I'm trying to build a sense within the viewer that anything could come out of the shadows at any time.

For audio we had Charles and Rob on wireless lavs which were sent to the Zoom H4n.  We also used another Zoom as a prop (their recording device for catching disembodied sounds or EVPs), and had that rolling as well.  I always like to have two sound recording devices going as you never know when one will fail during the best take.  The wireless lavs are great but occasionally pick up random RF hits, so I can always go to the handheld Zoom as a backup for that reason.

The other camera in this sequence (and for the rest of the movie) is a Sony HDR-CX12 with the infrared NightShot turned on.

The camera is setup with a wide-angle lens, and an additional IR light.  It shoots Hi-Def video at 1080i and then records AVCHD (a flavor of H.264) to Sony MemoryStick cards.  Unfortunately I found out late in the game that my old G5 can't read the files directly (it needs an Intel-based Mac for that), so eventually I found this little utility - VoltaicHD - which will convert the files to ProResHQ Quicktime movies for me to be able to use within Final Cut.

This camera is a prop also - it is the POV cam that the actors will use for the rest of the movie as they move around in the dark trying to solve the mystery of the sound Charles recorded.  I will use this shot whenever I need to show something that the Canon 7D can't pick up, and also when I want to build the tension by seeing their faces and putting the audience right there with them in the moment.

One thing when working with an IR camera is that... oh yeah, it can see in the dark!  Now this may seem obvious, but it is still easy to forget this basic point.  Everyone and everything should be cleared off the set - standing back in the shadows is not good enough.

Oops - Ben is in the shot.  I should have realized this during the shoot but didn't see it until playback.

Overall the shoot went very well, we worked very quickly, and everyone got to go home early - (a bonus when everyone has already worked a full day on their jobs and has families to go back to).  Thanks again to everyone on the shoot - we're about 1/3 of the way through the script and I'll be posting a rough cut of scenes 2 and 3 soon, so be sure to check back next week.

Spook Hunt - Scene 2 notes

We shot scene 2 recently, and it was a challenge to get this baby to work.

Charles gears up for the spook hunt - Canon 7D 17-55mm f/2.8 ISO 800 - all shots not color-graded

First, it is a dreaded exposition scene - in other words a scene in which I just need to give the audience some bits of info - mostly through dialogue.  Basically, the boys are gearing up for their spook hunt,  I introduce the infrared night vision camera that they are using (more on that in the next post), and we explain a bit more motivation behind why Charles wants to do this.

 

View from the Infra-Red POV cam (shot later with lights out)

 Some basic rules of exposition scenes:

1) Don't do 'em.
2) If you must do them, at least give the actors some other action to be doing while they are talking.
3) keep it short
4) Get out on a beat or a key bit of dialogue - DO NOT LINGER.

After fiddling with the scene a bit with my actors Rob & Charles, we managed to accomplish 2, 3 & 4.

Also making it tough was the challenge of shooting in a plain bedroom and trying to make it somewhat interesting.  I'm not sure we succeeded tremendously in this respect, but given our limited time constraints, and zero budget, we had to do the best we could and move on.  

Sometimes these are the hard decisions for a director - knowing when to cut your losses and not burn out your actors and crew on scenes that in the end are really not that crucial. 

Kubrick has been quoted as saying that to make a great movie, "All you need is six non-submersible units. Forget about the connections for the moment..."  What he means by this is to focus on the six or so essential core scenes in your movie that tell your narrative and your thesis.  Do your hard work in these scenes. If they are made well and hold up under scrutiny, then they will become the foundation upon which your movie is made.  Everything else is window dressing - don't blow your creative energy and budget on the window dressing.  This is where most Hollywood films get it wrong.

Spook Hunt - scene 1

Alright, here it is - the first cut of scene 1:


Spook Hunt Scene 1 from Todd Miro on Vimeo.

This cut has a first pass of my color grading, graphics and music (which I did my own dang self in Garage Band in about 15 minutes!)

We shot the scene in about 4 hours with about 7 different setups.  Lighting was fairly straightforward as I really wanted the sense of two guys at night around a lit dining table in an otherwise dark house.

Present for the shoot were myself (writer/director), Rob Weiner, (director of photography), Charles Yoakum & Rob Sandusky (talent), Kristin Nelder (audio/gaffer/camera advisor/production stills/and jack of all trades) and Ben Weiner (key grip/clapper/PA).

We shot with a Canon EOS 7D with a couple of rented prime lenses - a Canon EF 24mm f/1.4  and a Canon 50mm f/1.4  The fast lenses allowed us to shoot at ISO 400 most of the time.  For those unfamiliar with the 7D, (and what rock have you been living under) this amazing camera allows you to shoot full HD video (1920x1080) at 24fps with beautiful 35mm lenses and depth of field for around $2,000.  This allows for a very convincing film-look at a bargain price.  (For info on this camera and HD DSLRs in general, be sure to check out Phillip Bloom's incredibly informative blog.)

 

(Rob Weiner with the Canon 7D)

Monitoring was done through Rob's Panasonic BT-LH1710W 17" HD monitor, looking at HDMI out from the camera.  This was essential for framing the shots and finding critical focus.

 

(me looking at framing through the BT-LH1710W)

Audio was fairly straightforward: 2 wireless lavalier microphones (1 for each actor) fed in to a Zoom H4n digital recorder.  We used another Zoom on the table pointed at the actors as a boom mic.

 

(only follically challenged filmmakers need apply)

I slated every take to match sync between the camera and the two digital recorders.  I wound up hand-syncing in Final Cut (since there weren't that many shots) but I will eventually use Plural Eyes to sync when we start shooting more.

 

(enjoying a frosty beverage from craft services - oh wait, that's just a water from my garage - the travails of low budget filmmaking!)

(Rob extolls the virtues of alcohol to Charles...  Charles isn't buying it)

 

(Me pointing at nothing in particular. That's a director's job - to look like you're in control and know what you're doing even when you don't.  When in doubt, point at something. Rob is playing along, pretending to be impressed at my eloquent insights, but he really just wants to know when he can go home.)

After the shoot, Rob loaded the video files onto my drive (I prefer the GTech drives - rugged, fast and mobile) and then I transcoded them to ProResHQ to import into Final Cut.  The scene cut together very quickly as I knew pretty much what takes I wanted to use.  Also, being the writer/director/editor, I had already played the scene out in my head many times, so the actual cut went very fast.

This scene was fully scripted and blocked out ahead of time.  Rob and Charles added a bit of improvisation at rehearsal which we incorporated into the final shoot.  The rest of the movie will be very different as it is not fully scripted and we will improvise lots of it.  I have each scene written out with the beats I want to hit, but I want to allow Rob & Charles to explore the scenes as they happen to them.  This, combined with the infra-red POV camera shots should add some realism and immediacy to the scares that await them.

That's it so far - we start rehearsing the next scene in a week and will shoot it later this month.

There really are no excuses anymore to making your own high-quality movie.  The tools are incredibly cheap and offer amazing, professional results.  As technology has leveled the playing field, content is king, so story should be your primary concern.  If you've got a great story to tell I encourage you to get out there and do it!

  

(all photos courtesy of Kristin Nelder - thanks K!)